Using data that surveys sample households in the tribal area of rural Gujarat known as the Panchmahaals-Dahod and a non-tribal sample from Maliya and Jasdan in the Rajkot district of Saurashtra, we find the prevalence of large-scale food insecurity with less than 10 per cent of the population surveyed found to be food secure all 12 months in a year. A staggering 73.66 per cent (Panchmahaals) are found to be food insecure for more than six months in a year. The corresponding figure for Rajkot sample stands at approximately 19 per cent. This food insecurity is seen to be roughly consistent across poverty classification categories with similar distributions of food deprivation across both above poverty line and below poverty line households in our sample. Finally, the unavailability of food is found to be a seasonal phenomenon with unavailability peaking over the summer and monsoon and dropping off right before the winter months.
